The Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was the administrative arm of the Communist Party. Initially a handful of party workers, the Secretariat evolved into a powerful bureaucracy with oversight of the entire Soviet political system and economy. Although the size of the Secretariat was modest in comparison to the giant governmental bureaucracy, its power was not. It was the apparat and those who worked in the Secretariat were the apparatchiki. Headed by the General (or First) Secretary and the other Secretaries of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Secretariat became the body that ensured that Soviet political and economic organs followed party policy. Josef Stalin was responsible for building the Secretariat, and Nikita Khrushchev was responsible for reaffirming and renewing its power. Its influence diminished only under Mikail Gorbachev, who in his final years, turned to the power of the Presidency and a Presidential Cabinet of Ministers, which was created in 1990.
At the height of its power, the Secretariat headed by its powerful General Secretary determined the agenda of the Politburo and the Central Committee. Attention usually focused on the General Secretary, and to a lesser degree, the dozen or so Secretaries who worked with him, rather than the larger bureaucracy that constituted the Secretariat.
Bibliography
Huskey, Eugene. (1992). Executive Power and Soviet Politics: The Rise and Decline of the Soviet State. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
Nogee, Joseph L., ed. (1985). Soviet Politics: Russia after Brezhnev. New York: Praeger.
Smith, Gordon B. (1992). Soviet Politics: Struggling with Change, 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin's Press.
—NORMA C. NOONAN
